Surprises

My sister is a 3rd year vet student at Tufts. She finished her coursework in February and participated in her school's white coat ceremony, symbolizing that she and her fellow students would be let loose upon the world. My parents bought tickets to fly out to the East Coast. Which meant they would of course be visiting their respective families in Maryland and Pennsylvania, even though both families were going up to Massachusetts to see Cassi.

And because my grandpa Lauver turned 80 in February, it meant they were going to have a surprise party.

My mother's family cannot resist a surprise party of any kind. My mom turned 40 the first year after we moved to Alaska, and my dad and her parents arranged for them to visit for her birthday. They've had surprises of random family members showing up at birthday parties, anniversary parties, graduations--pretty much any time they can surprise somebody, they will.

So when my grandmother decided to throw a surprise party for my grandpa to coincide with my parents being in town for Cassi's white coat ceremony, my mom asked me if I would like to get in on the surprise. 

Absolutely I would.

It meant I had to fly from Denver to Baltimore with all 3 kids by myself, but it was totally worth it. We lied to my grandpa and said that the kids and I were also coming to the white coat ceremony. We told a lot of lies that weekend. WORTH IT.

Grandma Huelin made the cakes--even my dad's family was in on the surprise!

Having me and my parents at the party wasn't surprising enough, so my sister flew in from Boston for the weekend and my cousin Steven and his wife came up from Florida.

Do they look happy or what?

My grandparents and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Minus Ryan, who had to work :0(

Also, Cassi looks taller than me in this photo, but I assure you SHE IS NOT.

We hung out at the restaurant for about 4 hours, then moved the party to Aunt Dori and Uncle Kevin's house for another 4. It was fantastic to hang out with my extended family. Everyone had a blast, and the kids were even on their best-ish behavior.

Poor Benjy needed a nap after all the partying.

Plot twist!

The Reynolds Tribe is on another adventure, though not the one we originally planned.
We left Laramie after church on Sunday and drove to Ryan's brother's house in Denver to have Reynolds Christmas with Ryan's family. Ryan's mom cooked a feast for everyone, we opened presents, and most importantly--the girls' team won the annual game of SceneIt.
On Monday we left Denver, aiming for Las Vegas (the New Mexico one), which is about halfway between Denver and my parents' house in Las Cruces. We were going to stay in a hotel, swim in the pool, and eat at Pizza Hut--basically Sammy's trifecta of joy.
It was snowing in the mountains along the Colorado-New Mexico border, and we saw at least five cars off the road in various states of being towed. Ryan drove slowly, but surely, on to Las Vegas. But about 15 miles outside of Raton, NM (the last "big" town before Las Vegas), something went wrong with the car.
Let me just say that it was a good thing that Ryan was driving and not me, because I doubt I would have noticed anything was wrong. But Ryan heard a weird sound and noticed that the engine noise had changed before all the warning lights on the dash lit up. We pulled off the highway on an exit-to-nowhere, where Ryan determined that the car was undriveable. We called our insurance's roadside assist and arranged for a tow truck. Neither of us had ever been towed before, so it was a good thing the nice lady helping us told Ryan that he would need to arrange for us to be transported back to Raton. Most tow trucks don't have room for five extra people, three of whom are in car seats, obvs. But Raton didn't have any rental car companies that we could find on Google, so... we had a dilemma.
1) Get a rental car from Las Vegas, eighty-ish miles away and get towed there instead of Raton. But then we would have to pay for the tow.
2) Get a rental car from Las Vegas, leave our car in Raton, and use the rental car for the 10 days left of our vacation.
3) Think fast.

We chose number 3.
Every time we drive past Raton, we have made note of the nice, new LDS chapel right off the highway. We knew the church was here in Raton, so we got on LDS.org to find the phone number of the bishop or branch president. It only took a few minutes, and we got lucky--President Terhune answered the phone. Ryan explained our situation to him, and President Terhune and his wife jumped in their cars to pick up our family. They arrived less than five minutes after the tow truck, with room for all of us and our luggage.
The craziest part was that once upon a time, the Terhunes had lived in Wyoming. President Terhune was one of the first Seminary teachers that Ryan supervised when we moved to Laramie.
They drove us to the Holiday Inn, where my mom had made a reservation for us. Ryan walked through the snow, trying to find a fast food place close by so we could eat dinner (at 9:30pm), but no luck. So I hit up the vending machines. After the machine ate three of my dollars, and my chips were all stuck, I stood in front of it, feeling like crying. A nice girl who was much stronger than me came by and shook the machine until it released my food. Ben and Amelia were fast asleep, so Ryan, Sam, and I had a picnic on the bed while watching SportsCenter.
And that's where we are now, still waiting for an update on our car.
There's a popular saying among writers: When something goes wrong in your life, yell "Plot twist!" and move on. We've had quite a plot twist: By now we should only be a couple hours from my parents' house, listening to Christmas music and bopping around in the car. Instead we're facing the possibility of staying in the Terhunes' home for Christmas (while they visit family in Utah). We won't have any idea of when we'll be out of Raton until we hear back from the mechanics that have our car.
It's a crappy situation, but we feel like it was as good as it could possibly have been. We broke down in an area that had cell phone reception (not a guarantee in this part of New Mexico), we were able to get towed to a place close enough to be covered by our insurance, and best of all we were rescued by a couple of true Saints.

Hello Again

I'm on hold with McCormick's Shareowner Services because I cannot figure out how to fill out a Stock Power Form. And yes, I am aware of how pathetic that sounds. I've been on hold for fifteen minutes, with no end in sight, so I figured I should update the blog. We'll see how far I get...
Not long after my last blog post everyone in our house came down with a stomach bug.

This poor little guy insisted on sleeping on the floor in the bathroom

Then we went on vacation to spread our germs to Ryan's family and mine. Sorry, everyone. We had a nice early Christmas at the "other Reynolds'" home. Ryan's grandma has moved back to Colorado from Arkansas, so she was able to join us this year. (ooh, a human being answered!) (okay, that was fast)
The biggest news, however, is that my reign of terror as Undefeated Pickle Champion is over. My sister found the Christmas Pickle this year. She was so excited to find it that she ripped it off the Christmas tree, leaving the hook behind. (obvs. not a professional, but she hasn't found the pickle in like, 6 years, so what do you expect?) The funniest part (in my opinion) was that the Pickle Present my mom chose was a gigantic Twix bar. Twix are my absolute favorite, it was like Mom was just expecting that I would win. And when I saw the size of that Twix bar, I wished I had. C'est la vie. Enjoy your crown, Cassi, because next year that pickle is MINE.
If you click back to my November posts, you'll see some excerpts from the novel I worked on for National Novel Writing Month. Last night I finally finished the first draft! That's very exciting for me because I HATE drafting. I much prefer editing to drafting, so now I get to go back and revise and make it all nice and smooth and pretty. I'm going to let it sit for a while and work on some of my other projects in the meantime. I'm looking forward to that because I'm a bit burned out on Boldly Go at the moment.
Ryan has started his second semester of grad school. So he's busy and stressy. (I made that word up.) He works so hard to balance work, school, his calling, and family time. Last semester he got an A in his class--we were thrilled! Hopefully his hard work will pay off again this semester.
Sammy has started randomly quoting movies at us. We frequently hear him yelling "You. Are. A. TOY!" when he's playing in his room. He is obvs just like me, I talk to myself in movie quotes all the time.
Benjy is in love with Lightning McQueen. I swear, the words he says most frequently are "McQueen!" and "Kachow!"He has a matchbox-car version of LMQ that he takes everywhere. It's his best friend. If I hear him screaming, it's usually because he's realized that LMQ is not in his hand.
And that's the latest with the Reynolds Tribe. See you next month! (ha ha)

A Snowy Vacation, or That Time Ben Fell into a Hot Spring

My parents seem to inexplicably have leftover timeshare points every year. Not inexplicably (because they are very generous people) they always let us use some to take our boys on little trips that we otherwise wouldn't be able to afford. Last year we went to Estes Park, and this year we got to go to Steamboat Springs!

We got into Steamboat just before dinnertime, dropping off our suitcases and whisking the boys off to have dinner. We chose a place called Fiesta Jalisco, which I had been to on a visit to Steamboat years ago, and still remembered was good. Not at all surprisingly, my memory of anything having to do with food is impeccable, and Fiesta Jalisco did not disappoint. Great way to kick off our vacation.

We got up the next morning planning on getting in one of Steamboat's few natural hot springs that isn't stinky, but were foiled by the fact that it would cost forty dollars for all four of us to go. Forty dollars may not sound like much, but Ben and Sam have the attention spans of gnats, so it would have been forty dollars for less than thirty minutes of hot spring time. No thanks. We went to the resort's outdoor spa instead.

We still wanted to see some hot springs, however, so we pulled out our trusty GPS unit and went to do some geocaching/sight seeing. 

Ryan at the Black Sulphur Spring

The cache was near the Lithia Spring, not far from downtown Steamboat. We all piled out of the car, and Ryan and Ben headed over to the spring while Sam and I consulted the GPS. The minerals in the Lithia Spring make the water a foamy white, completely the opposite of the Black Sulphur Spring. It's also surrounded by concrete, with an opening for the spring that is flush with the water level. I don't have a picture of it, and here's why:

Ryan and Ben headed over to the spring as soon as they got out of the car. Ben, not being two yet, doesn't have the er, depth perception or experience needed to walk around a white hot spring that's even with the level of the white concrete, if you get my drift. He walked right into the water. Ryan, standing less than two inches away from him, was able to pull him out quickly enough that he was completely okay, albeit stinky from falling in a natural hot spring. 

We changed his clothes and gave him a snack and let him sit on Ryan's lap in the front seat of the car, so within minutes he was happy as a clam (smelled like one, too), so Sam and I were able to find the geocache. Success!

Triumphant selfie!

We went to a fun Italian restaurant that night called Mazzola's. They had the best strategy for keeping kids occupied at dinner that we've ever encountered! Each boy got a pizza pan and a small ball of pizza dough. The waiter told us that they could make whatever they wanted, and the cooks would bake it and bring it back to us. The boys, who take after me, weren't interested in sculpting--they just started eating the dough. But I saved some and managed to get this photo:

I made their names out of dough. Can't you tell?

It started snowing that night, and didn't really stop until we left, so we kept the boys entertained with movies. The resort had this neat child playroom, which we took Sam to while Ben was napping. Check him out!

He put together a puzzle! (with help, obvs.)

We took the long way back to Laramie so we could visit Ryan's grandmother and uncle in Denver. They live in Arkansas, but made the drive out to Colorado to visit family. It's been so long since Ryan's seen his grandmother that I've never even met her, so this was a real blessing.

Grandma Marjorie was so sweet to our boys, even though Sam decided to play zombies and spent a significant amount of time pretending to eat her brain. What a nice lady. I'm so thankful that the boys and I got to meet her. She's living with Ryan's mom, now, so we'll have many more opportunities to see her again!

So this is the New Year

Before I say anything else, let me just tell you that I found the pickle ornament again this year.
Now that we live in Wyoming, we get to see Ryan's family a lot more often than when we lived in Utah. For the first time since we were married, we got to spend time with them near Christmas, which was so nice. It's very important to Ryan and I that our boys know and love their cousins, and I really treasure those moments that they get to play together. It was wonderful to sit around Rusty and Chrissy's Christmas tree and spend time with the "other Reynolds". The boys were completely spoiled, as were Ryan and I. We spent Christmas Day at my parents' home, with my sister on her practically non-existent break from vet school. Cassi and my mom spent a significant amount of time being sick, which was good because Cassi got to lay around and have a Doctor Who marathon without feeling guilty, but bad because we didn't get to do all the exciting things we wanted to do with her, like sledding at White Sands, watching The Hobbit, and making the pilgrimage to Sparky's for green chile cheeseburgers (I guess Cass could have had a veggie burger). We still had a lovely time, and like always my parents spoiled us with presents, good food, and free babysitting. By the way, The Hobbit was better than the book (surprise). Tolkien-lovers are free to hate on me, but the fact is that his prose sometimes drives me to distraction. Anyways...
Like everyone else does in the month of January, we made New Year's resolutions. We're typically pretty terrible at these, so little hope there. At least our health insurance company provides incentives for us to keep 6 goals a year. Ryan is weighing himself every morning for this bimonthly goal, and I am going to bed by 11pm. So I better skedaddle. More to come!

Fried Pickles, or The Most Forgetful Weekend of My Life

First off, here's a picture of The Reynolds Tribe's first Halloween in Laramie: 

That bright shiny ribbon was attached to a balloon that Sister Williams gave to us. It's still floating around our house!

My parents had a lot of extra time share points this year, and they generously offered to use some of them so that we could have a mini-vacation. So we spent the weekend in Estes Park, Colorado, at the Historic Crags Lodge. As always, my job is to pack, and Ryan loads everything in the car. We left our house around 2:30pm on Friday afternoon, feeling good about our weekend. We were about five miles away from Fort Collins, our first stop, when I realized we forgot to bring a stroller or a baby carrier to transport Benjy around for the weekend. Strike one for Kara. We did a little shopping and eating in Fort Collins, and called some of our old college friends who were still in the area until we found someone able to loan us a stroller. The Brinks are our HEROES.

We headed up to Estes Park and checked into the lodge. The friendly lady at the front desk handed me our room key, and then gave me the code to the swimming pool gate.

"Isn't the pool closed?" I asked. "I thought the website said it closed on November 1st."

"It used to," she informed me cheerily. "But we just built a brand new heated pool and spa, and they are open year round." I didn't pack our swimsuits. Strike two for Kara.

We had a two bedroom suite with a mini kitchen all to ourselves. It was decorated in a charmingly rustic style that we all loved.

The wardrobe in Sam's room

Even the toilet paper holder was faux-logs!

We spent Saturday morning walking around downtown, looking at cool shops. While Ben took a nap after lunch, the rest of us explored the lodge. A wedding was being held there that night, so the dining room was beautifully decorated. We couldn't go in the pool, but the hotel had a bunch of FunNoodles and a water ball, so we played with those instead.

The view from the lodge. The big white building is the famous Stanley Hotel, where the movie The Shining was filmed.

After Ben woke up, we decided to go geocaching around town. Both of the caches ended up being kid-unfriendly: one on a busy road, the other a hundred feet or more up the side of a "mountain". I found both on my own, so I still count the trip as a success. With some navigational help from my dad, we were able to drive out to a ranch where Ryan's dad worked in the seventies. It's now on the Colorado Historic Register. Then we went to dinner. In typical Reynolds fashion, we picked a place to eat, drove there, read the reviews in the parking lot, decided not to eat there, then spent 30 minutes trying to pick a new place to eat. We ended up at the Rock Inn Mountain Tavern, and while it was more expensive than we wanted, the food and service were both fabulous (no that is not an excerpt from my Yelp review). Ryan went in first to make sure it was kid-friendly, and by the time the rest of us got in, the waitress had already set up a booster seat for Sam and brought us a high chair to put Ben's car seat on. We went all out and ordered an appetizer- Ryan picked fried pickles. They were fabulous. Sam loved them. I loved them. Even Benjy sucked the breading off of one and cried when it was over. Our burgers were great, and our dessert was fantastic. We went back to the lodge feeling very full and happy. I was especially happy because I didn't have to look at the check.

We gave the boys baths, and watched some TV in bed together, and went to sleep! And that was our trip. The next morning (that is, this morning) we got up early and got ready for church. We were in such a rush to get back to Laramie that I left Ben's bowl of peas and our milk in the fridge in our hotel room, which of course I didn't realize until we were twenty miles away. Strike three for Kara. We made a brief detour in Fort Collins to return the stroller, and made it back to Laramie in time for church. Mini-vacations are great!

Trip to Colorado

We went out to Colorado to visit Ryan's family for Independence Day. Most of them hadn't met Benjy yet, so the visit served two purposes. We left Salt Lake at 5am on the 3rd. The kids slept most of the morning. We stopped at Little America so I could feed the baby. Ryan and Sam got ice cream cones (lucky!) Ryan let me drive part of the way, so I listened to Soup on my iPod to help me stay awake.

Blankie, check. Shade blankie, check.

Playing Angry Birds on the Nook

We stopped in Fort Collins so we could visit the Institute. We got the kids dressed and ready for the day there. Then we met our friend Katie during her lunch break and went to a restaurant right off campus- just like being in college again! Except, you know, with the munchkins in tow. We also visited the Reader's Cove, the independent bookstore I worked for my last semester of school. They were closing for good that week, so we bought a couple books to help them out. We also met up with our friend Mark. A productive side trip!
Down in Denver, we got to hang out with Ryan's family. Rusty and Chrissy once again opened up their home to us. They are so generous. Sam had so much fun playing with his cousins. I remember playing with my cousins as a kid, and how that always felt like the most fun ever.
To celebrate Independence Day, we took the boys to the (not-so) nearby town of Byers for their parade. I'd never been to a small-town parade before. We loved watching the fire trucks and floats drive down the main street. Sam loved the candy they threw to us. We had lunch with Ryan's mom, then all headed back to Rusty and Chrissy's. We went geocaching as a family, a first time for Ryan's mom.

Back at the ranch, we played our traditional game of SceneIt, boys against girls as always. Ryan and his brothers played video games at night after the rest of us went to bed. On the 5th we went to Heritage Square, a "family entertainment village" in Golden. They have an alpine slide, lots of carnival-style rides, and various vendors in a town square setting.

The only ride Sam really liked, not that you can tell from his expression!

Chrissy and the girls

Sam got on the Ferris wheel kicking and screaming. Eventually, though, he liked it.

Chrissy's dad owns the old-timey photo shop, Professor Goodbellows' Old-Time Portraits. If you've never done one of those photo shoots where you get dressed up in the old-fashioned clothes, you really should. It was a blast.

We were so lucky all the kids cooperated- even Benjy!

We went swimming that night. Poor Sam, he was totally terrified of the water. We made him get in anyway. He clung to my back while I swam around the pool, crying the whole time. Benjy, however, loved the water.

The next day we headed home. We spent some more time in Fort Collins before really getting on our way. This time, the kids were not as content to sit in the car. We made a long stop at Little America to have ice cream and play on the playground so Sam could get his wiggles out.

It took us almost 12 hours to get home from the time we left Denver, with all the stops we made. We were exhausted when we got home, but so happy that we made the drive. It's great to be with family!

A Time To Be Remembered

Ryan: On 17 July 2008, we were sealed for time and all eternity in The Salt Lake Temple. My bride was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I feel so blessed to have an eternal family, and I could not have asked for a better companion. She is true, faithful, kind, patient, sweet, understanding, virtuous and lovely. I think that is a nice way to start out my first blog post! =)

I wanted to create this post so that my family and friends could have a chance to see some of our pictures and hear of our fantastic travels in the days following our marriage. 

So, here we are coming out of the annex just after our sealing. You can see Jordan and Ann Dille, and Jordan's wife Maren in the background.